


Before The Garden

by GlitchCritter



Series: persona non grata [2]
Category: Christian Bible, Original Work
Genre: AU Jesus, Dissociation, Other, as in I tried to write something about a jesus figure and it went wildly off course, no one will read this high key, tagging this as christian bible cause original work rarely gets hits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:07:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25369585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlitchCritter/pseuds/GlitchCritter
Summary: Remember your mother’s story of how she gave birth to you here, how your father washed you in the pig’s water trough and declared you were beautiful. Imagine the reek, blood mingling with sheeps’ wool wet from one of twenty leaks in the ceiling. You were there, you should remember something so important. Something so intrinsic to the story of your worth. But there’s nothing.
Series: persona non grata [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1837216
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Before The Garden

The barn’s skeleton is a hulking thing. Civilizations of termites have risen and fell, epochs of rat kingdoms ended in starvation as even the molding straw finally dissolved into mush. You stand at the corner of its lurching frame and examine the cornerstone, trying to divine some sort of reason out of its crumbling granite. Close your eyes. Breathe in, breathe out. Remember your mother’s story of how she gave birth to you here, how your father washed you in the pig’s water trough and declared you were beautiful. Imagine the reek, blood mingling with the sheeps’ wool wet from one of twenty leaks in the ceiling. You were there, you should remember something so important. Something so intrinsic to  
the story of your worth. But there’s nothing. 

Apparently you came back often when you were old enough to walk. Spent hours staring at the expressionless animals, daring them to react. Your father would show you the scar on his knee from when the stairs collapsed on him as he took you down from the rafters because you were too scared to move. 

“See here, look what you’ve done.” And even as you both smiled, and laughed, you never could actually remember that fateful day, only knew it’s true nature from the slight bitterness in his tone and the subtle limp in his gait. How strange, to have a sin be so heavy without memory of the action. To know only from secondhand stories what a horrible person you truly are. 

Your mother had to give you directions, said them slowly, in a way that would be patronizing if you were anyone else. It still took two hours of trampling uncertainty, stumbling over stones and bulging roots and all the detritus of nature, until you found the abandoned shell, practically ran into it without first seeing it, because your eyes always seem to be experiencing the world ten seconds too slow, or eleven too fast, without any way to make the numbers even out.

A shadow begins to lap at your feet. You look up, and see a cloud, the only one in miles, drifting overhead. You leap out of its path with sudden urgency, tripping over the rusting frame, creating a vibration that ricochets up the rebar, making a deep sonorous ring, scaring off a bird in a nearby tree. Fleeing one bad omen only to rush into another one. Grab your wrist and yank on it five times. Compulsive repentance, curses only fixed through strange routines. There used to be a journal where you inscribed every proper counter-curse for bad luck-walk under a ladder, hop in a circle. Talk out of turn, bite your cheek until you can carve out a tiny piece. Think something cruel, pull out strands of curling hair until the pain returns propriety.

Your friends wait back at the motel, four bodies to a bed. Your lovers, too. They look to you for guidance when so often you barely know how to walk in the right direction. But somehow, stories, far more permanent than memories, sprout where you tread, evolve as you travel. 

Has any of your life really happened? You catch flashes- bright festival lights, the feeling of water over your head, someone’s calloused hands gripping yours. But nothing coherent, nothing solid, fragments of worlds that may be entirely fabricated. Maybe you were swapped with your true self, maybe you are a changeling made of mud and mugwort sent twenty years too late. A failure of crafting. And incidental inconvenience. 

Blink, and it has been hours inside your head with nothing to show for it. It’s like this every time-you try to find some clarity by going off on your own, reweaving through the fraying threads of your memory, but just walking the exact same path, both practically unconscious and altogether too aware of everything that you’ve told yourself shouldn’t matter. This stupid barn was supposed to fix things. Return to the beginning, complete the cycle, but all that’s left is rust and undergrowth because you are now certain your connection to this place, no, the place itself, is-  
Dead. That’s it. Your eyes dart like silver minnows, searching the dusky air for a reply. That’s a conclusion, it’s something. And as the thought ferments, you can feel the omens of three decades crashing in on each other, the walls of the barn collapsing, one by one. 

When you reach your friends in the early hours of the morning, your knees are lightly crusted with dirt and blood. You curl up next to your lovers and kiss them lightly. There is no need to rush the inevitable. It will come, soon, you feel it contracting in your chest. There’s no need to fear the omens, anymore.


End file.
